


Strawberries

by LadyLackless



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:20:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6404725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLackless/pseuds/LadyLackless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We made our way out of town, talking as easily as if there had never been a thing between us but sunlight and spring air.” –WMF, page 973</p><p>At the end of <em>A Wise Man’s Fear,</em> Kvothe and Denna flirt midriver. A ring is exchanged, and pretty words, and nothing more. But what if the scene ended a little differently? And what if, for once, we heard Denna’s point of view?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strawberries

_In an almost-empty inn many spans from the Waystone, a dark-haired woman sits at the hearth and plays her harp. The road has been long; the woman’s hands slow and fall still. In the silence the innkeeper’s daughter draws near. “Tell me your story…”_

\--------

The light struck bright and shivery and sharp off the water. I leaned into it with closed eyes, savoring the embrace of sun on my shoulders, the cold brush of the current against my legs. There is something about sitting on a warm stone in the middle of a river that gives a feeling of safety and contentment—though that feeling might have been as much due to my companion. I could hear the rippling sound of him moving toward me through the water, and the knowledge of his company was like a bubble of laughter in my chest.

“Yes.”

“Yes to what?” he said.

“Your question,” I said, teasing. “You’re about to ask a question. The answer is yes.”

Silence. He stopped moving through the stream and my heart lifted in expectation. What would he ask? It had gone on for so long, this awkward minuet; and though he danced with me so elegantly he didn’t seem to realize that to me he was a constant, the waystone around which I navigated my life. 

“I was wondering if you could move over a little,” he said, gently.

Ever the sweet fool, never pressing, never asking, never taking. I loved him for it. And yet, sometimes— Shaking my head, I shifted on the warm stone and opened my eyes.

He stood before me, bare to the waist, slender yet sinewy, no longer the child I met that night by the water so long ago, when starlight washed the bitter flame from his hair. Now he stood tall, a sorcerer and a fighter, with strange and secret scars; and the sun warmed the freckles that dusted his pale shoulders, soft perfect flaws like an invitation for stroking. He would sit beside me on the stone and our legs would brush. Color heated my cheeks at the thought, and my heart thrummed in my chest. 

He set the basket of strawberries beside me instead, and hope fell bleeding in my breast like a bird shot on the wing. 

We exchanged quips but I had lost the moment; my mind was elsewhere, and though I spoke I did not hear the words. How could I think this way about my dependable friend? Romance between us could only end in pain, the certain demise of our friendship. Had I known then what I know now, that I would lose him anyway—well. Things might have ended differently between us. 

_The woman falls silent. The fire in the hearth casts warm mahogany light over her hair, over the faint lines on her face._

I must tell you, I was a courtesan. A sort of—well, close enough to a whore. _She smiles at the girl’s surprise._ Yes, close enough, but far more glamorous than you are thinking, I am sure. I was clever, and I knew how to listen; and men wanted to take me dancing as much as to take me to bed. I was about your age, and—well, I won’t tell you the whole story. Suffice to say my life was interesting, and difficult, and strange. And that for me to waltz through Imre on Kvothe’s arm was utterly impossible. Our platonic rendezvous always took place outside, far from the eyes of those who mistakenly thought they owned me, who would have been threatened by our friendship let alone anything more. For me to love Kvothe fully, truly, would have been the end of my—career, as it were. 

_The woman shakes her head dismissively._ Leave this be. Sitting on the rock midstream this all was merely a whisper in the back of my mind, the unwelcome echo of past thoughts. I was warm with the sunlight and with the presence of him, my oldest and only friend—

—who stood waist-deep in the water, laughing too brightly and avoiding my gaze, as if I could not read in him all the passions he dared not say, as if I did not feel them myself—

“Feed me strawberries,” I said, and cursed myself.

He blushed and stepped closer, reaching for the basket on the rock beside me. Opened his mouth—to speak some witty seven-word nothing, no doubt. But the rocks were treacherous—he wobbled, uncertain, and began to fall—I flung myself from the rock, my arms thrown forward. It sounds preposterous to tell it—when, in all our years of friendship, was I ever the one who caught him? But my hands jammed against his chest. He gasped, sought to steady himself—flailed, flung an arm over mine. Off-balance, he looked up at me with an expression of such startled need that I could not help myself. I pressed my lips to his.

For the barest moment he was perilously still. Then he tilted his head and I inhaled the smell of him, his hand ghosting ever so lightly up my side to brush my neck. His tousled hair was damp against my fingers. Soft kisses, so sweetly consuming that I lost myself. There is—a feeling, when you kiss someone you care about for the first time. And no—client, or casual flirtation, can match it.

_The woman falls silent, as though forgetting her audience. When she speaks again her voice is slower, lower._

I wish I could say that we stood kissing there forever, the cool river flowing around our ankles until the end of time. I wish we kissed there still. But—after a time time he stepped away from me, hair tousled, lips reddened, and in his widened eyes I could see a heartbreaking alchemy of confusion and hope and joy.

What was I to do? I desired him like I had desired no man before. Me, a courtesan to kings, wooed by men and women alike from Imre to Severen-high. Me, who smiled and flirted and danced in my wide-necked gowns, and kept my heart firmly out of the matter. I had been so strong all my life, and so stupid. What was I to do? He parted his lips to ask some question I could not answer, and in the space between his breath and his first word I fled. Splashed clumsily to the riverbank, seized my shoes and petticoats, and ran for Imre so fast that my lungs screamed in my chest. Ran like it was the last thing I would ever do, like it was the end of me.

I heard him call: “Denna, wait—” But I ran on. Yes, I was leaving him, yes I was breaking his heart, yes, yes. I had kissed him. What had I done?

Back in my room, wheezing from asthma, I gathered my things and scrawled a shaky note for my latest lover. When the butler came at my summons I gestured for him to pick up the trunk. “I stumbled into trouble and must fly.” Light words, tripping off my tongue. Seven; I counted without meaning to, and ached.

But I had done this a thousand times before. The cramped coach rattled north as I watched Imre fall away behind me; and by nightfall I stood on the streets of an unfamiliar town with an unfamiliar wind tousling my hair, and the familiar promise of new beginnings like a sweet on my tongue. I raised my head and inhaled the night, and felt myself to be whole.

You must understand. It is human nature to choose the pain we know instead of pain that is new to us. Leaving him was a small pain I had felt a thousand times before. Loving him… that would have been—different. And we are all afraid of what we do not know…

_After a time the girl stood. She pushed in the chairs, tidied the bar, and climbed the stairs to her bed. But the she left the fire burning in the grate, and the woman sat beside it for a while still, watching the red flames subside into ashes._

**Author's Note:**

> I was aiming for the voice of an older, bitter Denna here; I am not sure I succeeded. She is legendarily difficult to track, after all. 
> 
> Much of the dialogue is quoted from Patrick Rothfuss's formidable _Wise Man's Fear >. I do not own the setting or characters. Standard fanwork disclaimer, etc._
> 
>  
> 
> _Pardon the tropes._


End file.
